Simple Heroism
by LooksJustLikeTheSun
Summary: Rorschach has been the only hero in New York City for almost a decade, but he's inspired the youth..
1. Meetings with Saviors

_Rorschach belongs to Alan Moore._

_My reason for writing this is simple; Rorschach must live on, and the youth of this alternate reality must not be scared._

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It was that time of night again, the time when I put on my costume and patrolled the streets. I'm a defender; or what the government called a "masked vigilante". But what's the problem? What's the harm in putting on a mask and going out to help people?

Rorschach does it. He's not as nice.. But he does his job well, and I am following in his footsteps, no matter when the government says. After all, I'm a hero, not a tool.

[One year earlier]

"Adonieux."

"Hmm?"

"You need to go home. The party is over."

I could barely see straight. I couldn't speak without slurring my words badly. I remember drinking an entire bottle of vodka myself.

"I don' think I can geddurp.."

My friend pulled me up off the couch and started pulling me to the door of her apartment.

"Listen, Adonieux, any other day I'd let you stay, but my parents are coming home in a few hours and I'm supposed to be grounded, plus you're drunk and I've got no coffee. I'm sure you can make it home. Its only seven blocks."

I was outside the door as I sluggishly turned to protest, but she'd shut the door as soon as I was out. I was tripping over my feet as I tried to make it down the stairs, and I'm surprised I didn't die on the last flight. I stumbled through the glass double doors of my friend's building and onto the sidewalk with the shoulder strap of my purse held tightly in my sweaty palm. It was all I could do to stand up straight, and after walking a block and a half or so, I couldn't even do that.

I collapsed on the curb about six blocks away from my apartment, and decided to just sit until my vision was clear… which, in all actuality, was a bad idea at three O'clock in the morning on a New York City street. I was pulled into an alley by a man I didn't know, and helpless to do anything but try to push him away when he crushed me against the cold brick wall. He cut my shirt to shreds with an army knife, free hand covering my mouth.

The man started to unzip my jeans, but was pulled away by a figure in a tattered brown fedora, which was pulled mostly over his face, and a jacket in nearly the same condition, finished with purple pin-striped pants and a stained white scarf around his neck. He appeared homeless, as far as I could tell.

I heard my near-rapist's head crack against the opposite wall of the alleyway and cringed; the man in the fedora turned to face me. He walked over, pulled me up from the garbage covered cement, and gave me a small piece of his mind.

"No drinking. Go home."

I couldn't help but stare at his face; or rather, his lack of one. I could release but one word, utter one name.

"Rorschach…"

The black splotches on his face moved impatiently, the face underneath the mask apparently shifting into a different expression. He took his hands off my shoulders and I nearly fell again, though managed to regain my little balance. Every time I look back on my first encounter with him, I feel so frustrated. I must have seemed so pathetic… Nothing but an inebriated teenager.

I was able to stay on my feet. Rorschach's monotone voice spiked with some impatience; surprising.

"Not repeating again; go home."

He turned and started walking away, but I couldn't let him go… I had to thank him.

"Rorschach—"

He interrupted me.

"Walk now. Will be watching. You are safe."

[Present day]

"You are safe."

Those are the last words I heard from that masked mouth of his. Ever since, I've been cultivating my own alias… My known name. "Liberty" is what the media called me, and Liberty is who I am. This is very strange, of course, seeing as I idolize the person society calls a cold blooded murderer, a crazy person. They have warrants out for his arrest. Such unappreciative people… Rorschach has done more for this city than the rent-a-cops they call the NYPD ever could.

I snuck out my window onto the fire escape, clad in my Statue of Liberty green tank top and miniskirt, with my black boots on and a black mask over my eyes. It resembled a mask of Mardi Gras, minus the string. I'd taken Hollis Mason's advice from his book _Under The Hood _and stuck the mask to my face with glue putty so it would stay there. I kept criminals and civilians alike away from my mask at all costs.

I climbed the fire escape steps to the roof of my apartment building, where I could peer down into all of the alleyways surrounding it. This was the start of my nightly patrol. No one seemed to move in the darkness below me, but I could hear rustling..

I ran silently down the fire escape steps, somewhat graceful due to the gymnastics and martial arts classes I'd taken over the last year. I suspected that the noise of rustling garbage bags was nothing more than a homeless person making themselves comfortable, thought one could never be sure. I jumped down ten feet from the last level of fire escape, landing like a cat on the pavement of the alley. I stood… and nearly gasped. I saw him; Rorschach, my savior, the person who inspired my alias. He'd just pulled his mask over his head and now turned to face me, having heard the slight sound of my boot scraping the pavement. He could faintly see my shocked expression in the incredibly weak lighting of the alleyway lamp which was on the wall between us. I hated the dead light of the alley to be the first place I'd see Rorschach again.

The blotches on his face formed nervous symmetrical shapes as his facial expression changed, a moment of electric tension between the two of us; there hadn't been another decent hero in the city since the Keene Act had been placed in '77. He seemed surprised that, in the entire city, I'd found him here.

I started to come to my senses as he was walking away. I couldn't let him leave again, not without a proper "thank you for saving my life". So I ran after him.

"Rorschach! Wait!"

"Work alone. Don't need help."

"No, that's not what I'm here for! I didn't even know you were there, Rorsch—"

I put my hand on his shoulder to stop him and he grabbed my wrist, throwing me over his head. I landed neatly on my feet about five feet in front of him, holding up a hesitant hand.

"Wait. Please."

The blotches on his mask seemed to move… almost hesitantly.

"You're Liberty."

"Yes, but only because of you."

He sniffed.

"Stupid reason."

My hero thought my reasoning was stupid? That honoring him and helping keep the city pure was stupid? It made me angry. I went to shove him, and he grabbed my hand, bending it to a painful angle, but not something I couldn't twist out of. I could risk a broken pinkie.

I pretended to struggle, to be in excruciating pain.

"Wh-who do you think you are? I wanted to thank you for saving my life… And my innocence."

I twisted sharply out of Rorschach's grasp, hearing my pinkie finger and wrist crack, but not break. I used my other hand to slap him across the face. Hard. The slap knocked his fedora off his head, and he just stood, the ink blotches shaped to where my hand had been.

"Thanks, Rorschach."

I didn't hear him move, even after I'd disappeared into the darkness to finish my patrol in angry disappointment. My hero was nothing but a cruel, over glorified stranger. The fact that he didn't hit me back after I slapped him was vexing; he wasn't known for taking disrespect. Either he was shocked that I, a teenager at most as he must have seen, was able to hit him at all [as was I]. Or possibly, he felt bad for treating a fan the way he did. I figured it was more likely the first one, and the possibility that he wasn't used to being touched at all. After all, why would Rorschach care what I thought? The newspapers always reported him as a sociopath.

Rorschach the sociopath.

I should have guessed.

Rorschach's Journal, July 21st, 1983—

Met Liberty; listened to her excuse for heroics. Made her angry… Took an unexpected slap to the face. She left. Wonder why she got so angry? Remember to investigate Liberty's identity. Happy to have new heroes on the streets.


	2. Disposition

After the night I saw Rorschach again, I patrolled in areas much further from home, hoping not to run into him, even though I knew he could be anywhere. He watched over the entire city. I just did my small part.

I sat atop a dark, empty building about a mile away from my own abode. It was a bad part of town... things were always going down. This place was normally infested by rent-a-cops who worked for the owners of the land and buildings, but apparently this one's owner didn't care to enough to use it or protect it. Maybe it had no owner.

I could hear a scream emit from the entrance of the bulding, and jumped up by instinct. It sounded like a male scream... one of a man in pain. Had someone been jumped? Mugged?

there was a very long ladder running up my side of the building, which I climbed down easily. I followed the screamer through the garage-sized front door of the building, sticking to the door frame. It was a huge building, probably a factory at one time; this made my job easier, sinde most of the old facotry buildings had one main floor and then a level that only ran around the edges of them, probably where offices would be. In one of these second floor offices, I could see flash lights being moved from place to place, shining out the windows, and other places. I could see three standing sillhouettes and one being held down against what I judged to be an old desk that had been left here when the factory was abandoned. The shadows on the wall made me thing of the Sillhouette, who died before I was born, if for nothing but the name itself.

I made my way up the rusted metal stairs on my tip toes, hoping like hell they wouldn't creak. I got lucky; from the top of the stairs, I made my way to the window in the office here I saw the light, looking in, careful to stay out of the flashlight beams.

Inside the room, I could see three men holding another man down against, like I'd guess, an old desk, while they burned him with their cuban cigars; they were well dressed and chubby, while the burnt one was in sweats, missing a shirt, and almost anorexic he was so skinny. Probably a coke addict.

"So that's it; Drug deal gone bad."

My eyes went wide as the men shined their lights out the window, basking my face in an unnatural battery-generated glow. Had I said that outloud?!

Two of the well-off men had started out of the room. The third man was guarding the burnt one, though it was obvious he wasn't going anywhere fast

Luck was on my side tonight; I was dealing with fat men. they couldn't both fit at the door at once, so my plan was simple and easily forseen by a worthy enemy. Fortunately, these two weren't the brightest bulbs. They could only come single-file through the door, and even though they were weilding gones, they used them like they'd never shot a gun before. I ducked as the first man shot, and swept my legt so that I took his feet out from under him. He fell back into the other man, on top of his gun, which shot the first through the collar bone as the second fell back and hit his head against the old desk. I stood up straight and looked for their friend, but the door that went out to the old fire escape was open.

For now, the other accomplice wasn't important. The man they'd had captive was burned and badly injured, and he was unconscious to boot. He needed help.I figured the two others would be out for a whilem seeing as one was in shock and the other more than likely had a mild to serious concussion. I made my way over their bodies to the victim, who I shook in a spot that didn't look bruised, but gently nonetheless.

"Hey, wake up. We need ot get you out of here and into a hospital."

His eyes opned slightly and there was another manly scream from outside, though it was short and sounded interrupted. I pulled the victim up carefully from the antique desk carefully, letting him put most of his weight on my shoulders as I led him down the rusty old stairs that I'd been so quiet on before. I got him out into the cool night air and sat him on the black top, with the intention of going back in for the two other men, thought they would be much harder to get down from the room. They were at least a hundred pounds heavier than the victim. So, I started to walk back into the building, thought at the top of the stairs I heard a nasal whine cut off by the sound of vertabrae snapping. I peered in to see Rorschach with my two criminals dead on the floor, heads turned all the way around, and I could guess what had happened to the man who ran away.

My hand clapped over my mouth in shock and he turned around sharply to face me, having heard it. I stared incredulously.

"What have you done? They.. They were already under control..."

The blotches on his mask were unforgiving in form.

"Were wanted mobsters."

I was very nearly hysterical, something that was out of the norm for me.

"You killed them, Rorschach! Dead! Dead as doornails! No prison, no second chance, _nothing!"_

The words "second chance made him cringe slightly, the blotches on his mask moving irradically, though it was mostly his body language I read.

"You didn't object when rapist was disposed of."

I thought about this in silence for a moment; Rorschach was right. I didn't object when he split my near-rapist's head again the alleyway brick. I was appalled at myself for such a thing. Any human being cold change...

I turned around and headed back down the stairs, out the garage-like door. I helped my victim to a nearby pay phone, where I called for an ambulance. He never said a word, and I was gone as soon as I heard sirens closing in.

Home was never a relief to me; it meant that once I was there, crime ran amuck as it pleased, or it was swallowed into the depths of faulty jurisdiction and jail time. It was nerve racking, and I only ever slept four hours a night at most. The fact that I had to prepare for school at six in the morning didn't help, either.

This night, I drempt about Rorschach... but not the one I'd seen tonight. It was the Rorschach that saved me in that alleyway a year ago, when I was sixteen. He had a sort of worry in his voice; still monotone, but not so... flat. Not apathetic. He sounded like he cared about saving lives then, I imagined Rorschach now, cracking a mobster's neck, using the fact that he saved me and I didn't object to shut me up. This was a nightmare that suffocated you with the fact that your idol isn't who you thought he was. It crushed one's hope.

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Rorschach's journal, July 22nd, 1983

Liberty is soft. Just a kid. Took down two mobsters instead of killing them. Left her fingerprints all over the place; very sloppy. I cleaned them up to prevent fingerprint identification when the pigs came. Remind Liberty to clean up if she is seen again soon.

She will be seen again soon. Must investigate identity; could find nothing out outside of first escapade.


End file.
